Crimes - Good Hope (2011)

Late May is the time where I start to think about summer. Technically still spring, there are a few summer-esque things that occur in the next few weeks before the solstice. Honeysuckle will explode in the next two weeks, and with it the dizzyingly sweet fragrance. At the end of the first week of June, lightning bugs (or fireflies) will fill the evening trees with miniature constellations. 

This is also the time I inevitably start looking for my summer music. I don't know why summertime is associated with music... maybe almost probably (definitely) it has something to do with capitalism. But, like a parasite, capitalism lives in me and it feels natural to seek the summer record.

Good Hope is a good contender. Crimes from Minnesota, a 4 piece sharing the same lead singer of the phenomenal Loud Sun, recorded their debut LP Good Hope in 2011. It is reverb-laden, shimmering psych pop with a melodic and stoned vocal delivery that just makes me relaxed. These songs, much like those of Loud Sun, are like the "couch-lock" of music. Put it on and forget it's there, you'll realize 30 minutes later that you just came up for air and that you have been swimming, drowning in thought. 

You'll wonder where the time went. Their second release was written up by our old friend Elvis Dracula in his EP Grab Bag Vol. 32. Also an excellent release. 

If you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, Crimes are playing a reunion show on June 3rd at Palmer's Bar.

Crimes - Good Hope

 

Loud Sun - Sea Grave (2017)

Loud Sun's Andrew Jansen and I have something in common: we both recently moved away from the west coast.

Making a new home for ourselves defines chapters in our lives. Death and birth. There are the big things we leave behind, like friends, which me mourn the loss of most immediately. And as time progresses, a deeper nostalgia for lost things awakens: yawning and stretching into fringe details, we begin missing the way the air felt in the morning, the sounds of a Baptist church choir practicing on Wednesday nights, the smells of nearby restaurants.

This melancholia can quickly become morose, especially if one allows the dust to settle.

Sea Grave is the second release from Jansen's Loud Sun project, and it feels like a love letter to the west coast in a lot of ways. Jansen is a keen student of mellow, sun-bleached, shimmering pop with wisps of psychedelia, though his bio suggests he may actually be a student of the natural sciences. Perhaps that's why he seems so adept at combining the feel of a place with his music.

From beginning to end, Sea Grave is a beautiful record, and you can purchase a cassette tape through his Bandcamp page. For myself, having moved from a more ideal scenario to a less ideal scenario, the music here feels penetrating and concise... an ode to a memory. The impeccable song "Teen Pyramids" has become my anthem of the autumn.



Link to Loud Sun Bandcamp page for Sea Grave, 10 songs:

Loud Sun - Sea Grave

Driver Dress - 7" (2013)

Driver Dress is a solo project from Aaron LeMay, a Minneapolis local that was kind enough to send us a copy of their new splendid 7 inch.  LeMay has played with some of the city’s staple musicians like Mark Mallman, and you can see just how well crafted his form is on this record. This is burnt-out, lo-fi garage rock that could sit comfortably next to older Ty Segall releases. The promo material that came with the record said all of the band’s members picked up instruments they had never played before to jam out these tracks, but I find that hard to believe based on the quality of each track. Don’t let the lo-fi tag fool you; this set of songs has production and precision that many of its contemporaries fail to achieve. You can hear the hints of a Roland RE-201 present, creating that timeless reverb sloping resonance all your recreation guitar pedals are trying to photocopy (often to no avail). My favorite track is the EP’s closer, “Spiders.” The tempo starts with a sludgy stride, and then builds with the assistance of a chant like chorus that makes for an admirable end to a great underground release from MPLS. 

Get it here:

Driver Dress - 7" (2013)